"A Chinaman of the T'ang Dynasty - and by which definition, a philosopher - dreamed he was a butterfly, and from that moment he was never quite sure that he was not a butterfly dreaming it was a Chinese philosopher. Envy him; in his two-fold security."

I'd also like to mention Emil Gilels, Glenn Gould, and Mstislav Rostropovich. Though obviously they are a different kind of artist than the type intended, my adoration for their interpretations never ceases.

With 90 bands instead of 10, your experiment has 800% relative error; if I were you, I'd work on my systematic error Anyhow, most of them are among my favorites too (maybe even in the top 10 sometimes, mine tends to float a lot)

Fedechiar wrote:With 90 bands instead of 10, your experiment has 800% relative error; if I were you, I'd work on my systematic error

Good suggestion! It turns out I didn't notice the scrollbar, and sure enough there were 10 more hiding below. At a nice round Adrian Monk 100 it became easy to spot the misplaced decimal... operator error again, for which I humbly apologize.

What's with the extra "mentions"? This is clearly supposed to be just your Top Ten. Sure, others might have bent the rules slightly, but they actually listened to all of Floyd's albums before placing them below Iron Maiden. Take your time....

Edit: Sorry, it was totally unfair to judge like that, especially after listening to Meshuggah which made me realize I was asking way too much.... Kidding, I'm kidding. Seriously though I respect you since obviously I wasn't even able to commit to a proper Top Ten. I'm only up to Top Five after thinking on it for weeks. Deciding on the other five would ignore so many more that remain important to me.

Plenty of errors and fudges are in there, with people submitting main people from bands, abbreviations, last names vs. first names, etc. Also I ignored XTCamus and a couple people that went off on a tangent focusing only on composers.

Sort of a mix between grunge, indie-ish and folk. Oh, and jazz from nowhere with Miles.

“It is in the deserts and high places that religions are generated. When men see nothing but bottomless infinity over their heads they have always had a driving and desperate urge to find someone to put in the way.” -Terry Pratchett

Honorable Mention: Interpol, Sam Cooke, Passion Pit, Milo Greene, and at this point I had to stop going through my music library, or you all would have had a list of about fifty artists just floating around.

This is such a difficult question. Doing a top ten seemed way too restrictive, so I did a top 100. I still had to miss out loads of really good bands though, took ages deciding which bands had to be omitted from the list simply because there wasn't enough space :/

Anyway, the list.

Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros

The Polyphonic Spree

fun.

Nakho and Medicine for the People

Arcade Fire

The Magnetic Fields

The Beautiful South

Beans on Toast

A Fine Frenzy

Gogol Bordello

Al Stewart

AJJ

The Mountain Goats

MIKA

Kitaro

Eric Bogle

Regina Spektor

The Killers

The Mighty Mighty Bosstones

Mischief Brew

Plastic Mermaids

Billy Bragg

Peter, Paul, and Mary

múm

Westlife

Israel Kamakawiwo'ole

Passenger

Owl City

Enya

Matisyahu

Die Antwoord

Simon & Garfunkel

David Bowie

Foster and Allen

Dragonforce

The Doubleclicks

Daniel Powter

Txarango

Against Me!

Rod Stewart

Pink Floyd

Frank Turner

Christina Perri

Mike Oldfield

The Cog Is Dead

Alestorm

The Seekers

Taylor Swift

Blackmore's Night

The Cat Empire

Trans-Siberian Orchestra

James Blunt

Smokie

The Houghton Weavers

Birdy

Boyzone

The Eagles

My Chemical Romance

Garrison Ulrich

Mr B. The Gentleman Rhymer

The Kinks

Dolly Parton

The Dubliners

Meat Loaf

Keane

The Carpenters

Ed Sheeran

Neil Diamond

Pet Shop Boys

Britney Spears

Garfunkel and Oates

ABBA

Derdian

Victoria Wood

Harry Belafonte

Johnny Cash

Sex Pistols

McFly

Scorpions

Train

Bob Dylan

Robbie Williams

Bellowhead

Elton John

Busted

S Club 7

Vera Lynn

Joan Baez

Belle and Sebastian

Don McLean

Freedom Call

Val Doonican

Bee Gees

Petula Clark

Paul Robeson

Denny Schneidemesser

Andrew WK

Sleaford Mods

Michael Bublé

The Tossers

If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, we have at least to consider the possibility that we have a small aquatic bird of the family Anatidae on our hands. –Douglas Adams

LOL you are being wrong again dude... and personally attacking. Lorde is good though. So Lorde, Eminem, Ariana Grande, Selena Gomez, Rage Against the Machine, Paramore, Alanis Morisette, Avril Lavigne, Maroon Five and Evanescence are my top ten artists.

Looking at my CD collection, if I ripped everything into iTunes, some of the bottom 4 bands might be replaced by Black Tape for a Blue Girl, Caravan, Genesis, Kansas, Magma, Pain of Salvation, Pink Floyd, Renaissance, or Rush. Dream Theater would move to #1 due to repeat songs on various concert bootlegs, but the top 4 would otherwise remain in place in that order. 5 and 6 might drop lower, but wouldn't fall out of the top 10.

Mikeski wrote:Dream Theater would move to #1 due to repeat songs on various concert bootlegs, but the top 4 would otherwise remain in place in that order. 5 and 6 might drop lower, but wouldn't fall out of the top 10.

Oh, man. If we use the Spotify/iTunes method and allow bootlegs, my Top 10 artists are probably all Pearl Jam.

If you like Call of Cthulhu and modern government conspiracy, check out my Delta Green thread.Please feel free to ask questions or leave comments.